Outdoor Adventures: An unusual guy and black bears

During a recent visit to Mammoth Lakes, Calif., I had the chance to hear their wildlife specialist speak.

He’s a character.

“I don’t want to alarm you, but there is a bear within 600 feet of us right now,” lanky wildlife specialist Steve Searles said.

Better known through Animal Planet’s “The Bear Whisperer” programs, Searles is the man responsible for making sure bears and people coexist in the high desert ski town east of Yosemite National Park’s Tioga Pass entrance and surrounded by the Inyo National Forest in the Eastern Sierra.

He doesn’t believe in killing the bears. He uses bullets, but they’re rubber.

He talks to the bears, yelling “bad bear,” but also speaks their language of blowing, chomping and clacking teeth.

“I can call cubs out of the tree and put them up into a tree,” said the straight-shooting, self-taught bear expert. “I use their words and my words. If they don’t understand, the shot gun comes out and we get it figured out.”

Searles is a local character, working with the town since 1996. A hunter and outdoorsman, he kind of lucked into the job that sees him patrolling the area from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. often seven days a week, educating the public and using unusual methods of bear management from firecrackers to air horns.

With bears on the move after winter’s slumber, they’re easy to find, from walking through the village to taking a dip in a golf course pond.

Searles says the bears have been in their dens for about five months and haven’t urinated, hydrated, eaten or defecated.

When they wake up, they still sleep 20 hours a day, but forage for grasses and dandelions for about six weeks before getting into summer’s feeding frenzy of more grass, tubers and roots.

Plus pizza and hamburgers.

That’s the problem.

“If you don’t feed them, you don’t have issues,” he said. “If you feed them, they will be back for more.”

He also advises the public not to approach the animal, instead watching the bear from afar through binoculars or a camera’s zoom lens.

Give the bear room in case it wants to escape. If a bear approaches while you’re having a picnic or are around the campfire, hold your ground by making yourself appear bigger by holding your hands above your head and make some noise.

Of course, keep sites clean and if you’re a vacation home owner, don’t put out bird feeders (try a birdbath instead).

“Bears are not nocturnal by nature,” Searles said. “But we ask our bears to work the nights instead of the days.”

Searles clearly involves locals and visitors in his approach to living with wildlife, including coyote, raccoons and cougars. Traffic signs remind everyone that speed kills wildlife. He hands out stickers reading: “Don’t feed our bears.”

In Mammoth, locals feel a sense of ownership and responsibility about the bears. Residents lock down their trash. They keep food away from the bears.

Clearly Searles is a man loving his job. Bears have taught him respect. He says they’re extremely intelligent, learn quickly.

But they also die. He doesn’t name them until after they’re at least 2 because more than half don’t make it. He doesn’t give them traditional names, instead tagging them by personality and physical attribute.